Mac OS X &lt;-&gt; Windows XP Networking

My wife's PC and my Macs are connected via a router. Believe it or not, the last time I networked two computers was back in the days of Mac OS 8. I assume that it is a simple matter of being able to see the HDs of each machine on the other machines?

Can someone give me a quick step-through? Chances are, I'll be able to figure out the Mac part, but the Windows setup is.... welll..... I must be careful as to not destroy my wife's Snood Machine. In a nutshell, I just want to copy files to each machine over the network. Once I am done, I will most likely turn off any file sharing.

OT: In Mac OS X, it is very easy to change the language, via the International preference. Does Windows XP function the same way? My wife's PC runs XP Japanese. I of course can use it, but if I could "switch" my user account over to English, that would be very swell. That is, without harming her user environment. I say this because I once installed Firefox on my account (her machine), and when she used her account, and things got kind of wacky. So I was told to het rid of Firefox..

Anyhow, the data transfer is the bigger concern over the language issue.

On Mac, Turn on windows file sharing on the mac. Go to the PC and show computers on network, you should see the mac, connect to it and it should prompt you are a user name nad password (any valid user names on the mac should do) you will then be able to access the home folder of that user.

On PC, enable sharing on the folder you wish to share. Get the PCs IP address just in case.
Go to Mac browse network, PC should show up, connect to it, enter user name / password or use guest, should see folder/files.

If not visible on network form Mac do an apple k to connect, enter in smb\ip adress and that should connect to your pc.

Carlos Camacho Wrote:OT: In Mac OS X, it is very easy to change the language, via the International preference. Does Windows XP function the same way? My wife's PC runs XP Japanese. I of course can use it, but if I could "switch" my user account over to English, that would be very swell. That is, without harming her user environment. I say this because I once installed Firefox on my account (her machine), and when she used her account, and things got kind of wacky. So I was told to het rid of Firefox..

Windows come localized with a single language. There is no option to change that localization. And sadly - even though you were in your account, windows does not separate user spaces nearly as well as other OSs.

Justin, I managed (very easily) to get the networking going between my two Macs. But the Windows XP machine was not "seeing" the Macs. I need a little more hand holding on that platform. On the desktop, I see the Network icon. I click it. The only icon in that folder is the machine's shared folders icon. Do I have to "turn on" networking/sharing, etc?

Quote:Windows come localized with a single language. There is no option to change that localization. And sadly - even though you were in your account, windows does not separate user spaces nearly as well as other OSs.

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. Indeed we truly are on the RIGHT platform with the Mac, eh?!

Try clicking on 'My network places' then if that doesn't show anything the options on the left hand side should have changed, you should now see an option to 'Entire Network' click on that. That might help.

If your wife's PC has firewire, target disk mode on the Mac could be an option, though I don't know how you would go about reading HFS from Windows.

Otherwise, you need to make sure the network connection is enabled, that TCP/IP and file sharing are turned on for that connection, and ideally, the PC and Mac should have IP numbers in the same IP network.

On your Mac, go to Applications > Tools > Catalog Access (this is translated directly from Norwegian, don't know if it's the correct name). Configure SMB and make sure your workgroup is the same as hers. (Windows-pcs needs these silly workgroups.)

Getting on to her files should be no problem, but for her to get your files is worse. Or, actually, as long as you want to let her see and edit all your files it is no problem. Make sure you have windows-networking on, and people should also be able to log on to your computer from another computer by SSH. (Turn on in same place as Windows-sharing).
Now all she has to do is find your computer and log on to it with your account name and password. Easy peasy!

(If you want to just have a shared-folder, you'll have to make a new account and allow others to log on to that account. When they log on, they can move to the files in your account and get what you have shared.)